3D Printing Some Calibration Cubes

In my previous 3D printing post I detailed my first 3D printing attempt. The nozzle scraped the elephant as it was being printed resulting in a model with misaligned base and no head. Tronxy support suggested that I increase the Z-offset to prevent that in the future.

Probably that's the solution to the problem. I had it near the recommended minimum. Before attempting to print another large model I thought I'd print a small calibration model.

It's not that I don't trust the product or the company. It's the whole "trust and verify" thing. Most of the failed model looked good so it should be accurate enough but it's better to rule out the possibility the machine might be off a tiny bit.

I found a calibration cube on Thingiverse posted by user iDig3Dprinting that is 20 mm along all three axes. Having equal dimensions should make it foolproof to measure.

I downloaded the calibration cube .stl file off Thingiverse and imported the file into the Tronxy slicer program. With a 30% grid infill the program estimated a print time of 22 minutes and a consumption of 1.63 meters of filament.

I printed two of these cubes. For now let's focus on the Z axis since that seemed more of a problem than the X or Y dimension.

I measured each Z axis on the calibration cubes with a digital caliper.

According to this article's mathematical formulas:

The clearance of my 3D printer is:

20.20 mm -20.10 mm = 0.1 mm

The tolerance of my 3D printer is

0.1 mm / 2 = +/- 0.05 mm

I also see in the article it recommends printing three to five cubes. My sample might be too small but assuming it's in the ballpark the Z axis of my 3D printer seems to be fine.

Links:

My Thingiverse account: https://www.thingiverse.com/holovision/designs
My Thangs account: https://thangs.com/Holovision
3D printing community on Hive: created/hive-103035